count of their adventures than of their amiableness-and that the great charm of his works is derived from the kindness of heart, the capacity of generous emotions, and the lights of native taste which he ascribes, so lavishly, and at the same time with such an air of truth and familiarity, even to the humblest of these favourites. With all his relish for the ridiculous, accordingly, there is no tone of misanthropy, or even of sarcasm, in his representations; but, on the contrary, a great indulgence and relenting even towards those who are to be the objects of our disapprobation. There is no keen or cold-blooded satire-no bitterness of heart, or fierceness of resentment, in any part of his writings. His love of ridicule is little else than a love of mirth; and savours throughout of the joyous temperament in which it appears to have its origin; while the buoyancy of a raised and poetical imagination lifts him continually above the region of mere jollity and good humour, to which a taste, by no means nice or fastidious, might otherwise be in danger of sinking him. He is evidently a person of a very sociable and liberal spirit —with great habits of observation-who has ranged pretty extensively through the varieties of human life and character, and mingled with them all, not only with intelligent familiarity, but with a free and natural sympathy for all the diversities of their tastes, pleasures, and pursuits-one who has kept his heart as well as his eyes open to all that has offered itself to engage them; and learned indulgence for human faults and follies, not only from finding kindred faults in their most intolerant censors, but also for the sake of the virtues by which they are often redeemed, and the sufferings by which they have still oftener been chastised. The temper of his writings, in short, is precisely the reverse of those of our Laureates and Lakers, who, being themselves the most whimsical of mortals, make it a conscience to loathe and abhor all with whom they happen to disagree; and labour to promote mutual animosity and all manner of uncharitableness among mankind, by referring every supposed error of taste, or peculiarity of opinion, to some hateful corruption of the heart and understanding.

helplessness and humility of our common nature. Unless we misconstrue very grossly the indications in these volumes, the author thinks no times so happy as those in which an indulgent monarch awards a reasonable portion of liberty to grateful subjects, who do not call in question his right either to give or to withhold it-in which a dignified and decent hierarchy receives the homage of their submissive and uninquiring flocks—and a gallant nobility redeems the venial immoralities of their gayer hours, by brave and honourable conduct towards each other, and spontaneous kindness to vassals, in whom they recognise no independent rights, and not many features of a common nature.

It is very remarkable, however, that, with propensities thus decidedly aristocratical, the ingenious author has succeeded by far the best in the representation of rustic and homely characters; and not in the ludicrous or contemptuous representation of them--but by making them at once more natural and more interesting than they had ever been made before in any work of fiction; by showing them, not as clowns to be laughed at-or wretches, to be pitied and despised-but as human creatures, with as many pleasures and fewer cares than their superiors-with affections not only as strong, but often as delicate as those whose language is smoother-and with a vein of humour, a force of sagacity, and very frequently an elevation of fancy, as high and as natural as can be met with among more cultivated beings. The great merit of all these delineations, is their admirable truth and fidelity-the whole manner and cast of the characters being accurately moulded on their condition-and the finer attributes that are ascribed to them so blended and harmonised with the native rudeness and simplicity of their life and occupations, that they are made interesting and even noble beings, without the least particle of foppery or exaggeration, and delight and amuse us, without trespassing at all on the province of pastoral or romance.

Next to these, we think, he has found his happiest subjects, or at least displayed his greatest powers, in the delineation of the grand and gloomy aspects of nature, and of the dark With all the indulgence, however, which and fierce passions of the heart. The natural we so justly ascribe to him, we are far from gaiety of his temper does not indeed allow complaining of the writer before us for being him to dwell long on such themes;-but the too neutral and undecided on the great sub- sketches he occasionally introduces, are exejects which are most apt to engender exces- cuted with admirable force and spirit-and sive zeal and intolerance-and we are almost give a strong impression both of the vigour of as far from agreeing with him as to most of his imagination, and the variety of his talent. those subjects. In politics it is sufficiently It is only in the third rank that we would place manifest, that he is a decided Tory-and, we his pictures of chivalry and chivalrous charare afraid, something of a latitudinarian both acter-his traits of gallantry, nobleness, and in morals and religion. He is very apt at least honour-and that bewitching combination of to make a mock of all enthusiasm for liberty gay and gentle manners, with generosity, canor faith-and not only gives a decided prefer- dour, and courage, which has long been faence to the social over the austerer virtues-miliar enough to readers and writers of novels, but seldom expresses any warm or hearty ad- but has never before been represented with miration, except for those graceful and gentle- such an air of truth, and so much ease and man-like principles, which can generally be happiness of execution. acted upon with a gay countenance-and do not imply any great effort of self-denial, or any deep sense of the rights of others, or the

Among his faults and failures, we must give the first place to his descriptions of virtuous young ladies-and his representations of the

to recal the public attention to them with any effect; and, at all events, impossible to affect, by any observations of ours, the judgment which has been passed upon them, with very little assistance, we must say, from professed critics, by the mass of their intelligent readers,

ordinary business of courtship and conversa- | the place of a more detailed examination of tion in polished life. We admit that those those which he has given to the public since things, as they are commonly conducted in we first announced him as the author of real life, are apt to be a little insipid to a mere Waverley. The time for noticing his two critical spectator;-and that while they conse-intermediate works, has been permitted to go quently require more heightening than strange by so far, that it would probably be difficult adventures or grotesque persons, they admit less of exaggeration or ambitious ornament: -Yet we cannot think it necessary that they should be altogether so tame and mawkish as we generally find them in the hands of this spirited writer,-whose powers really seem to require some stronger stimulus to bring by whom, indeed, we have no doubt that them into action, than can be supplied by the they are, by this time, as well known, and as Яat realities of a peaceful and ordinary exist- correctly estimated, as if they had been inence. His love of the ludicrous, it must also | debted to us for their first impressions on the be observed, often betrays him into forced subject. For our own parts we must confess, and vulgar exaggerations, and into the repeti- that Waverley still has to us all the fascination tion of common and paltry stories,-though it of a first love! and that we cannot help thinkis but fair to add, that he does not detain using, that the greatness of the public transaclong with them, and makes amends by the tions in which that story was involved, as copiousness of his assortment for the indiffer- well as the wildness and picturesque graces ent quality of some of the specimens. It is of its Highland scenery and characters, have another consequence of this extreme abund-invested it with a charm, to which the more ance in which he revels and riots, and of the familiar attractions of the other pieces have fertility of the imagination from which it is not quite come up. In this, perhaps, our supplied, that he is at all times a little apt to opinion differs from that of better judges ;— overdo even those things which he does best. but we cannot help suspecting, that the latter His most striking and highly coloured char- publications are most admired by many, at acters appear rather too often, and go on rather least in the southern part of the island, only too long. It is astonishing, indeed, with what because they are more easily and perfectly spirit they are supported, and how fresh and understood, in consequence of the training animated they are to the very last;-but still which had been gone through in the perusal there is something too much of them-and of the former. But, however that be, we are they would be more waited for and welcomed, far enough from denying that the two suc if they were not quite so lavish of their pres- ceeding works are performances of extraordience. It was reserved for Shakespeare alone,nary merit,—and are willing even to admit, to leave all his characters as new and unworn as he found them, and to carry Falstaff through the business of three several plays, and leave us as greedy of his sayings as at the moment of his first introduction. It is no light praise to the author before us, that he has sometimes reminded us of this, as well as other inimitable excellences in that most gifted of all inventors.

that they show quite as much power and genius in the author-though, to our taste at least, the subjects are less happily selected.

Dandie Dinmont is, beyond all question, we think, the best rustic portrait that has ever yet been exhibited to the public-the most honourable to rustics, and the most creditable to the heart, as well as the genius of the artist -the truest to nature-the most interesting To complete this hasty and unpremeditated and the most complete in all its lineaments. sketch of his general characteristics, we must-Meg Merrilees belongs more to the depart add, that he is above all things national and Scottish, and never seems to feel the powers of a Giant, except when he touches his native soil. His countrymen alone, therefore, can have a full sense of his merits, or a perfect relish of his excellences; and those only, indeed, of them, who have mingled, as he has done, pretty freely with the lower orders, and made themselves familiar not only with their language, but with the habits and traits of character, of which it then only becomes expressive. It is one thing to understand the meaning of words, as they are explained by other words in a glossary, and another to know their value, as expressive of certain feelings and humours in the speakers to whom they are native, and as signs both of temper and condition among those who are familiar with their import.

We must content ourselves, we fear, with this hasty and superficial sketch of the general character of this author's performances, in

ment of poetry. She is most akin to the witches of Macbeth, with some traits of the ancient Sybil engrafted on the coarser stock of a Gipsy of the last century. Though not absolutely in nature, however, she must be allowed to be a very imposing and emphatic personage; and to be mingled, both with the business and the scenery of the piece, with the greatest possible skill and effect.-Pleydell is a harsh caricature; and Dirk Hatteric a vulgar bandit of the German school. The lovers, too, are rather more faultless and more insipid than usual,—and all the genteel persons, indeed, not a little fatiguing. Yet there are many passages of great merit, of a gentler and less obtrusive character. The grief of old Ellengowan for the loss of his child, and the picture of his own dotage and death, are very touching and natural; while the many descriptions of the coast scenery, and of the various localities of the story, are given with a freedom, force, and effect, that bring every

feature before our eyes, and impress us with an irresistible conviction of their reality.

little too much like the hero of a fairy tale; and the structure and contrivance of the story, in general, would bear no small affinity to that meritorious and edifying class of compositions, was it not for the nature of the details, and the quality of the other persons to whom they relate-who are as real, intelligible, and tangible beings as those with whom we are made familiar in the course of the author's former productions. Indeed they are very apparently the same sort of people, and come here before us again with all the recommendations of old acquaintance. The outline of the story is soon told. The scene is laid among the Elliots and Johnstons of the Scottish border, and in the latter part of Queen Anne's reign; when the union then newly effected between the two kingdoms, had revived the old feelings of rivalry, and held out, in the general discontent, fresh encouragement to the partizans of the banished family. In this turbulent period, two brave, but very peaceful and loyal persons, are represented as plodding their way homewards from deer-stalking, in the gloom of an autumn evening, when they are encountered, on a lonely moor, by a strange misshapen Dwarf, who rejects their proffered courtesy, in a tone of insane misanthropy, and leaves Hobbie Elliot, who is the successor of Dandie Dinmont in this tale, perfectly persuaded that he is not of mortal lineage, but a

The Antiquary is, perhaps, on the whole, less interesting, though there are touches in it equal, if not superior, to any thing that occurs in either of the other works. The adventure of the tide and night storm under the cliffs, we do not hesitate to pronounce the very best description we ever met with,-in verse or in prose, in ancient or in modern writing. Old Edie is of the family of Meg Merrilees,- -a younger brother, we confess, with less terror and energy, and more taste and gaiety, but equally a poetical embellishment of a familiar character; and yet resting enough on the great points of nature, to be blended without extravagance in the transactions of beings so perfectly natural and thoroughly alive that no suspicion can be entertained of their reality. The Antiquary himself is the great blemish of the work,-at least in so far as he is an Antiquary ;-though we must say for him, that, unlike most oddities, he wearies us most at first; and is so managed, as to turn out both more interesting and more amusing than we had any reason to expect. The low characters in this book are not always worth drawing; but they are exquisitely finished; and prove the extent and accuracy of the author's acquaintance with human life and human nature.-The family of the fisherman is an exquisite group through-goblin of no amiable dispositions. He, and out; and, at the scene of the funeral, in the highest degree striking and pathetic. Dousterswivel is as wearisome as the genuine Spurzheim himself: And the tragic story of the Lord is, on the whole, a miscarriage; though interspersed with passages of great force and energy. The denouement which connects it with the active hero of the piece, is altogether forced and unnatural.--We come now, at once, to the work immediately before us.

The Tales of My Landlord, though they fill four volumes, are, as yet, but two in number; the one being three times as long, and ten times as interesting as the other. The introduction, from which the general title is derived, is as foolish and clumsy as may be; and is another instance of that occasional imbecility, or self-willed caprice, which every now and then leads this author, before he gets afloat on the full stream of his narration, into absurdities which excite the astonishment of the least gifted of his readers. This whole prologue of My Landlord, which is vulgar in the conception, trite and lame in the execution, and utterly out of harmony with the stories to which it is prefixed, should be entirely retrenched in the future editions; and the two novels, which have as little connection with each other as with this ill-fancied prelude, given separately to the world, each under its own denomination.

The first, which is comprised in one volume, is called "The Black Dwarf"-and is, in every respect, the least considerable of the family-though very plainly of the legitimate race and possessing merits, which, in any other company, would have entitled it to no slight distinction. The Dwarf himself is a

his friend Mr. Earnscliff, who is a gentleman of less credulity, revisit him again, however, in daylight; when they find him laying the foundations of a small cottage in that dreary spot. With some casual assistance the fabric is completed; and the Solitary, who still maintains the same repulsive demeanour, fairly settled in it. Though he shuns all society and conversation, he occasionally administers to the diseases of men and cattle; and acquires a certain awful reputation in the country, half between that of a wizard and a heaven-taught cow-doctor. In the mean time poor Hobbie's house is burned, and his cattle and his bride carried off by the band of one of the last Border foragers, instigated chiefly by Mr. Vere, the profligate Laird of Ellieslaw, who wishes to raise a party in favour of the Jacobites; and between whose daughter and young Earmscliff there is an attachment, which her father disapproves. The mysterious Dwarf gives Hobbie an oracular hint to seek for his lost bride in the fortress of this plunderer, which he and his friends, under the command of young Earnscliff, speedily invest; and when they are ready to smoke him out of his inexpugnable tower, he capitulates, and leads forth, to the astonishment of all the besiegers, not Grace Armstrong, but Miss Vere, who, by some unintelligible refinement of iniquity, had been sequestered by her worthy father in that appropriate custody. The Dwarf, who, with all his misanthropy, is the most benevolent of human beings, gives Hobbie a fur bag full of gold, and contrives to have his bride restored to him. He is likewise consulted in secret by Miss Vere, who is sadly distressed, like all other fictitious damsels, by

her father's threats to solemnise a forced upon the monument of the slaughtered Presbytemarriage between her and a detestable ba- rians; and busily employed in deepening, with his ronet, and promises to appear and deliver chisel, the letters of the inscription, which announeher, however imminent the hazard my ap of futurity to be the lot of the slain, anathematized ing, in scriptural language, the promised blessings pear. Accordingly, when they are all ranged the murderers with corresponding violence. A blue for the sacrifice before the altar in the castle bonnet of unusual dimensions covered the grey hairs chapel, his portentous figure pops out from of the pious workman. His dress was a large oldbehind a monument, when he is instantly fashioned coat, of the coarse cloth called Roddin. recognised by the guilty Ellieslaw, for a cer- grey, usually worn by the elder peasants, with waistcoat and breeches of the same; and the whole tain Sir Edward Mauley, who was the cousin suit, though still in decent repair, had obviously and destined husband of the lady he had af-seen a train of long service. Strong clouted shoes, terwards married, and who had been plunged into temporary insanity by the shock of that fair one's inconstancy, on his recovery from which he had allowed Mr. Vere to retain the greatest part of the property to which he succeeded by her death; and had been supposed to be sequestered in some convent abroad, when he thus appears to protect the daughter of his early love. The desperate Ellieslaw at first thinks of having recourse to force, and calls in an armed band which he had that day assembled, in order to favonr a rising of the Catholics-when he is suddenly surrounded by Hobbie Elliot and Earnscliff, at the head of a more loyal party, who have just overpowered the insurgents, and taken possess on of the castle. Ellieslaw and the Baronet of course take horse and shipping forth of the realm; while his fair daughter is given away to Earnscliff by the benevolent Dwarf; who immediately afterwards disappears, and seeks a more profound retreat, beyond the reach of their gratitude and gaiety.

The other and more considerable story, which fills the three remaining volumes of this publication, is entitled, though with no great regard even to its fictitious origin, "Old Mortality;"-for, at most, it should only have been called the tale or story of Old Mortality -being supposed to be collected from the information of a singular person who is said at one time to have been known by that strange appellation. The redacteur of his interesting traditions is here supposed to be a village schoolmaster; and though his introduction brings us again in contact with My Landlord and his parish clerk, we could have almost forgiven that unlucky fiction, if it had often presented us in company with sketches, as graceful as we find in the following passage, of the haunts and habits of this singular personage. After mentioning that there was, on the steep and heathy banks of a lonely rivulet, a deserted burying ground to which he used frequently to turn his walks in the evening, the gentle pedagogue proceeds

One summer evening as, in a stroll such as I have described, I approached this deserted mansion of the dead. I was somewhat surprised to hear sounds distinct from those which usually soothe its solitude, the gentle chiding, namely, of the brook, and the sighing of the wind in the boughs of three gigantic ash trees, which mark the cemetery. The elink of a hammer was, upon this occasion, distinctly heard and I entertained some alarm that a march-dike, long meditated by the two proprietors whose estates were divided by my favourite brook, was about to be drawn up the glen, in order to substitute its rectilinear deformity for the graceful winding of the natural boundary. As I approached I was agreeably undeceived. An old man was seated

studded with hob-nails, and gramoches or leggins, made of thick black cloth, completed his equip. ment. Beside him, fed among the graves, a pony, the companion of his journey, whose extreme whiteness, as well as its projeccting bones and hollow eyes, indicated its antiquity. It was harnessed in the most simple manner, with a pair of brauks, and hair tether, or halter, and a sunk, or cushion of straw, instead of bridle and saddle. A canvass pouch hung round the neck of the animal, for the purpose, probably, of containing the rider's tools, and any thing else he might have occasion to carry with him. Although I had never seen the old man Lefore, yet, from the singularity of his employment, and the style of his equipage, I had no difficulty in recognising a religious itinerant whom I had often parts of Scotland by the name of Old Mortality. heard talked of, and who was known in various

"Where this mian was born, or what was his real name, I have never been able to learn, nor are the motives which made him desert his home, and adopt the erratic mode of life which he pursued, known to me except very generally. He is said to land farm'; but, whether from pecuniary losses, of have held, at one period of his life, a small moordomestic misfortune, he had long renounced that and every other gainful calling. In the language of Scripture, he left his house, his home, and his kindred, and wandered about until the day of his death-a period, it is said, of nearly thirty years. ast regulated his circuit so as annually to visit the "During this long pilgrimage, the pious enthusi graves of the unfortunate Covenanters, who suffered by the sword, or by the executioner, during the reigns of the two last monarchs of the Stuart line. These tombs are often apart from all human habitwanderers had fled for concealment. But wherever ation, in the remote, moors and wilds to which the they existed, Old Mortality was sure to visit them, when his annual round brought them within his reach. In the most lonely recesses of the mountains, the moorfowl shooter has been often surprised to find him busied in cleaning the moss from defaced inscriptions, and repairing the emblems of grey stones, renewing with his chisel the halfdeath with which these simple monuments are usually adorned.

the

As the wanderer was usually to be seen bent on this pious task within the precincts of some country churchyard, or reclined on the solitary tombstone among the heath, disturbing the plover and the blackcock with the clink of his chisel and mallet, with his old white pony grazing by his side, he acquired, from his converse among the dead, the popular appellation of Old Mortality."

Vol. ii. pp. 7-18.

The scene of the story thus strikingly introduced is laid-in Scotland of course-in those disastrous times which immediately preceded the Revolution of 1688; and exhibits a lively picture, both of the general state of manners at that period, and of the conduct and temper and principles of the two great parties in politics and religion that were then engaged in unequal and rancorous hostility. There are no times certainly, within the reach of authentic history, on which it is more painful to look

else of it than that such events took place in its course. Few men, in short, are historical characters-and scarcely any man is always, or most usually, performing a public part. The actual happiness of every life depends far more on things that regard it exclusively, than on those political occurrences which are the common concern of society; and though nothing lends such an air, both of reality and importance, to a fictitious narrative, as to connect its persons with events in real history, still it is the imaginary individual himself that excites our chief interest throughout, and we care for the national affairs only in so far as they affect him. In one sense, indeed, this is the true end and the best use of history; for as all public events are important only as they ultimately concern individuals, if the individual selected belong to a large and comprehensive class, and the events, and their natural operation on him, be justly represented, we shall be enabled, in following out his adventures, to form no bad estimate of their true character and value for all the rest of the community.

The author before us has done all this, we think; and with admirable talent and effect: and if he has not been quite impartial in the management of his historical persons, has contrived, at any rate, to make them contribute largely to the interest of his acknowledged inventions. His view of the effects of great political contentions on private happiness, is however, we have no doubt, substantially true; and that chiefly because it is not exaggerated-because he does not confine himself to show how gentle natures may be roused into heroism, or rougher tempers exasperated into rancour, by public oppression,-but turns still more willingly to show with what ludicrous absurdity genuine enthusiasm may be debased, how little the gaiety of the light

back-which show a government more base and tyrannical, or a people more helpless and miserable: And though all pictures of the greater passions are full of interest, and a lively representation of strong and enthusiastic emotions never fails to be deeply attractive, the piece would have been too full of distress and humiliation, if it had been chiefly engaged with the course of public events, or the record of public feelings. So sad a subject would not have suited many readers—and the author, we suspect, less than any of them. Accordingly, in this, as in his other works, he has made use of the historical events which came in his way, rather to develope the characters, and bring out the peculiarities of the individuals whose adventures he relates, than for any purpose of political information; and makes us present to the times in which he has placed them, less by his direct notices of the great transactions by which they were distinguished, than by his casual intimations of their effects on private persons, and by the very contrast which their temper and occupations often appear to furnish to the colour of the national story. Nothing, indeed, in this respect is more delusive, or at least more woefully imperfect, than the suggestions of authentic history, as it is generally- -or rather universally written -and nothing more exaggerated than the impressions it conveys of the actual state and condition of those who live in its most agitated periods. The great public events of which alone it takes cognisance, have but little direct influence upon the body of the people; and do not, in general, form the principal business, or happiness or misery even of those who are in some measure concerned in them. Even in the worst and most disastrous times-in . periods of civil war and revolution, and public discord and oppression, a great part of the time of a great part of the people is still spent in making love and money-in social amuse-hearted and thoughtless may be impaired by ment or professional industry-in schemes for worldly advancement or personal distinction, just as in periods of general peace and prosperity. Men court and marry very nearly as much in the one season as in the other; and are as merry at weddings and christeningsas gallant at balls and races-as busy in their studies and counting houses-eat as heartily, in short, and sleep as sound-prattle with their children as pleasantly-and thin their plantations and scold their servants as zealously, as if their contemporaries were not furnishing materials thus abundantly for the Tragic muse of history. The quiet undercurrent of life, in short, keeps its deep and steady course in its eternal channels, unaffected, or but slightly disturbed, by the storms that agitate its surface; and while long tracts of time, in the history of every country, seem, to the distant student of its annals, to be dark-political contention, without caring much about ened over with one thick and oppressive cloud of unbroken misery, the greater part of those who have lived through the whole acts of the tragedy will be found to have enjoyed a fair average share of felicity, and to have been much less impressed by the shocking events of their day, than those who know nothing

the spectacle of public calamity, and how, in the midst of national distraction, selfishness will pursue its little game of quiet and cunning speculation-and gentler affections find time to multiply and to meet!

It is this, we think, that constitutes the great and peculiar merit of the work before us. It contains an admirable picture of manners and of characters; and exhibits, we think, with great truth and discrimination, the extent and the variety of the shades which the stormy aspect of the political horizon would be likely to throw on such objects. And yet, though exhibiting beyond all doubt the greatest possible talent and originality, we cannot help fancying that we can trace the rudiments of almost all its characters in the very first of the author's publications.-Morton is but another edition of Waverley;-taking a bloody part in

the cause, and interchanging high offices of generosity with his political opponents.Claverhouse has many of the features of the gallant Fergus.-Cuddie Headrigg, of whose merits, by the way, we have given no fair specimen in our extracts, is a Dandie Dinmont of a considerably lower species;—and even